Vogue International Editor Suzy Menkes is the best-known fashion journalist in the world. After 25 years commenting on fashion for the International Herald Tribune (rebranded recently as The International New York Times), Suzy Menkes now writes exclusively for Vogue online, covering fashion worldwide.

#SuzyPFW: Dries Van Noten’s 100 Fashion Shows

The Belgian designer excelled himself by making the future from his own past with extraordinary mixes of colour and pattern.

Can there ever have been a more colourful, crazy and confident 100th birthday? There were characterful faces and fresh young things; and patterns either with a past or shaped for the future. It was a moment for cyber-orange and country greens; a plain navy overcoat facing off a digitally patterned parka.

It was Dries Van Noten's big moment – and it ended with a wall of women of all ages in bright clothes against a vast blank background and cheers that echoed and rolled and merged with the clapping and foot stamping.

Dries van Noten (Foto: IMax Tree)

On each chair was a book that explained the celebration. It contained patterns Dries had used in previous collections, reworked or inserted in the new season's looks. Or, as the foreword described it: “each pattern has been overprinted or embroidered with geometric shapes in vivid colours.”

“This show number one hundred is something that makes you think about the past and the future,” said Dries about the landmark moment. “We sat, we talked – it was important to us, to go back to the essence, to examine the DNA and decide what we hope to take with us to the future.”

“In that way,” the designer continued, “I really wanted to have a very simple show. The essence of a show. No tricks, nothing really grand, just like a show where it’s about light, sound and clothes – everyone in the clothes.”

Dries van Noten (Foto: IMax Tree)

And so it was. But that description did not begin to describe the visual and aural drama: women of different shapes and ages, often his former models, now with a new kind of character and experience etched on their faces. The music alone, with its city traffic sounds and barking dogs weaved in with Pina Bausch modern dance, Louis Armstrong jazz, soundtracks from Pedro Almodóvar movies and David Bowie’s Heroes made it seem as if an entire life was being served up in this single show.

The clothes, straightforward in themselves, were stunning in pattern and colour, but also orderly in the way they were presented: first fiery red, plain or over-printed and with neutral colours – say a white shirt with black trousers to break the drench of colour. Then a similar treatment with green, overprinted on a gleaming satin surface. And, as the show moved on, ever more colour and pattern, dizzying mixes of blue flowers, diamond patterns in yellow and orange, red roses disrupted by yellow cut-outs. A mayhem of colour dazzling the eyes – especially when Dries's quiet, plain Belgian taste erupted into vividly coloured fur worn in green or shocking pink as lush and tactile sleeves.

Dries van Noten (Foto: IMax Tree)

“We went into our print archive and we selected the most important prints of the hundred collections to date, and we reworked them,” explained Dries. “And with all the prints we took, we cut graphic motifs. So, we really add a very contemporary layer to them. In that way, we had something of the past, something of the future.”

Those words were not enough to describe the sophistication of the clothes and especially their mix of, not only colour, but tactile surfaces. As silvered satin faced off velvet or fur, there was a rare sense of the extraordinary: something imaginative beyond the boundaries of most people's visual imagination.

Dries van Noten (Foto: IMax Tree)

The fact that these ordinary clothes made exceptional were worn by ‘real’ women, those with looks that suggested strong character and personal attitude, made this presentation all the more powerful.